The Bristol Blog features news and information about Bristol, Connecticut.

September 11, 2013

Three stories I wrote on 9-11 for The Bristol Press

Just wandered back into the archives to find out what I'd actually written that day, since my memories of 9-11 don't include typing up anything for the Press....

All across town
Tuesday, people watched television and worried about friends and family in New
York City and Washington.

“It feels like war on America,” said Robley Newton, the
city’s emergency planning coordinator. “It’s a dark, dark day.”

School board member Barbara Doyle had some anxious hours as
she worried about her daughter, Eileen Doyle, who works about 10 blocks from
the World Trade Center.

She said that when she finally spoke with her daughter,
who’s the director of financial aid for a law school, she was “very much
relieved after two hours of agony.”

Eileen Doyle told her mother she could hear the noise and
explosions.

“She is extremely shaken up,” Barbara Doyle said.

There were scores of Bristol residents in New York at the
time, but most were far from the sickening scene at the World Trade Center
towers – including Patricia Ward, the wife of Councilman Art Ward, who was
planning a day of sightseeing at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

Ward said she never got close to her destination because of
the terrorist attack.

Newton said one of his co-workers had family who worked in
the famous twin towers. He couldn’t get through on the phone to learn their
fate, Newton said, and “just paced all morning.”

Mayor Frank Nicastro said he called local emergency
personnel, including key police and fire representatives, to meet Tuesday
afternoon to review procedures, check phone systems and more.

“We jumped on this right away to maintain safety and
security in the city,” the mayor said, to make sure “our children are safe, our
citizens are safe and our businesses are safe.”

“We have the capabilities to meet everything that comes our
way,” said Newton, “but there’s concern from our offices.” He said that in a
crisis now it isn’t clear the federal government would be able to help quickly.

Nicastro said he “spoke with ESPN early this morning to make
sure they were handling security on their end.”

He said, too, that police officers were issued information
Tuesday to keep an eye out for particular activities and to pay particular
attention to possible terrorist targets, public and private. He said he did not
want to identify any of them.

“Bristol Hospital is on alert,” Newton said.

Ward, a former marine, said he’s ready to go help get the
people who committed the assault.

“Kick their ass,” Ward said.

Collin Seguin, a junior at Boston University who graduated
two years ago from Bristol Central High School, said he knew three friends who
worked in the area of the World Trade Center.

“It was scary wondering if they were OK,” Seguin said, “and
then it was even scarier when I realized that there had been a terrorist in
Boston, just a few miles away from where I am.”

One of the hijacked planes had been flying from Boston to
Los Angeles.

“My stomach gets sick just thinking about it,” Seguin said.

“To know I could have lost friends that I care about, and to
know that there was some sicko in this city, and nothing was done about it just
really, really scares me,” Seguin said.

One Bristol mother, Cindy Sirianni, breathed a sigh of
relief when she heard from her daughter in New York after the explosions.

Her daughter, Francine Keynejad, was slated to move into the
World Trade Center with her office next week, she said.

Many of her co-workers were already there, Sirianni said,
and tracking them down occupied the day. One man escaped the disaster because
he got caught up in traffic.

“He was cussing at the traffic and little did he know it was
saving his life,” Sirianni said.

One of her daughter’s friends was on the 45th
floor of one tower. When the plane hit, the woman felt the rumble and saw
papers fly.

She and co-workers dashed out and, Keynejad told her mother,
“I think she just ran until she got home.”

Sirianni said her son-in-law, Barry Keynejad, an engineer
with the Long Island Railroad, spent the day at Penn Station helping get people
home.

Nicastro called on local residents to give blood to help the
many injured in the attacks on the Pentagon and the 110-story landmarks near
the tip of Manhattan.

“Today, our country suffered a national tragedy that wasn’t
brought on by hurricane, flood or tornado but by the cowardly acts of
individuals who are unknown to us,” Nicastro said.

“We will all, regardless of party affiliation, rally
together to see to it that justice is done,” said Nicastro, a U.S. Navy veteran
who served for decades in the Connecticut National Guard.

Former Mayor Bill Stortz, a Republican, called the attack “a
cowardly act, one where many, many innocent people were involved.”

“I would hope that the United States, and the rest of the
free world would respond in a strong and forceful manner so as to show that we
will not tolerate this type of unwarranted killing and maiming of innocent
people,” Stortz said.

“I personally support the president in any forceful and
meaningful retaliation,” Stortz said.

Sirianni said the disaster is almost too much to believe.

She recalled the wonder the twin towers once created.

“What a view it was” up there, she said.

***

Former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Barbara Franklin said
Tuesday the terrorist attack on Washington and New York “makes us feel sad,
then vulnerable, then angry.”

“There will be monumental repercussions, here and around the
world,” the Bristol resident said. “This was a watershed event.”

From her office in nation’s capital, she said she “cannot
fathom this tragedy, the lives lost, in the buildings, the airlines, on the
ground” and that the attack has the “earmarks of a very carefully planned and
executed terrorist attack.”

Franklin, who served in the administration of the first
President Bush, said that the “numbers of things that had to be done in tandem
by the terrorists in order for all this to come off boggles the imagination.”

“The fallout will be incredible,” Franklin said. “What will
we do in response? And, how do we protect ourselves from such acts?”

“What will be the reaction around the world?” she wondered,
and questioned whether the attack will “trigger a more concerted effort to
attack terrorism.”

Franklin, an international business consultant, said that
the days’ events were “just devastating.”

She said that just last weekend she was in the Battery area
at the tip of Manhattan and “walked through the lower part of one of the World
Trade Center buildings,” both of which collapsed after two hijacked airplanes
dived into them Tuesday morning.

Shortly after, another hijacked plane plummeted into the
south side of the Pentagon, which withstood the damage better.

Franklin said that the area of Washington where she lives
and works – near the Watergate complex, not far from the State Department and
Kennedy Center – seemed quiet in the aftermath of the attacks.

She said she had planned to go to the Capitol Hill area for
lunch Tuesday but she stayed put.

“I can hear sirens,” she said Tuesday morning, “and there is
a lot of traffic, moving at a crawl, on Virginia Avenue, which leads to the
Rock Creek Parkway going out of the city.”

By mid-day, Franklin said, the city was “closed for security
reasons” and people were walking with their briefcases, driving and more as
they tried to get out of Washington.

She said there was “gridlock everywhere in the District and
on the roads all around it” with “things just closing down.”

Franklin said that many commentators who are speculating
about the effect of the disaster on American consumer spending and the economy
are off the mark.

“Contrary to some of those people,” Franklin said, “I don't
think this will turn out to be detrimental.”

“We could have just the opposite effect -- with people
showing strength, determination, and a bit of anger,” Franklin said.

“The American people are very resilient and that spirit that
will to show itself,” she said.

“We'll not let terrorists disrupt us, our economy and our
government,” Franklin said. “I think there will be a strong sense of unity.”

“Then comes the hard part for our government -- figuring out
how to better protect the U.S. and its citizens from such things in the future
and finding out who did this and bringing them to justice,” Franklin said.

“We should also see a worldwide effort to eradicate
terrorism, at least I hope so.”

***

The coordinated attack on the World Trade Center and
Pentagon Tuesday is “a very large act of war” that calls for “a very
significant response,” said U.S. Rep. Nancy Johnson.

The New Britain Republican called it “profoundly shattering
that we could be so vulnerable” and that thousands of Americans could die “on
our soil” at the hands of a hidden enemy.

“This carries as serious a connotation as Pearl Harbor,”
Johnson said. “There is no question that we are going to have to respond
forcefully and unequivocally.”

Johnson, whose northwestern Connecticut district includes
Bristol, said the day’s events were “really a tragedy of staggering
proportions.”

“It’s more than just a terrorist act,” the veteran
congresswoman said from her home in Washington. “It’s truly awesome and
terrifying.”

Johnson said the attack requires an international response
to stamp out terrorism.

She said that if terrorism “becomes how we discuss our
differences” among nations “it will be how we destroy our world.”

Leaders across the globe, particularly in the Arab world,
need to “grasp that terrorism as an instrument becomes a power so great that it
alone can ignite an international conflagration” that could consume the
civilized world, Johnson said.

She said Arab leaders must sign on to the battle to wipe out
terrorism.

If the Arab world continues to offer public and “silent
support” for terrorists they are “going to have the capability to ignite World
War III.”

Johnson said the nation has to gather information about what
happened but the early indication points to terrorist organizations based in
the Middle East.

Johnson, one of the most senior members of Congress, said
that with Arab help, the United States can respond “in a targeted and
responsive way that hopefully will end the development of this business of
terrorism and the evolution of a non-territorial state that acts the same way
as a nation state.”

Johnson said that she learned about the World Trade Center
attack when she spotted a television report in someone else’s office. Later,
back in her own office, she and her staff watched in horror as events unfolded.

After another plane smashed into the Pentagon, orders came
to evacuate Capitol Hill offices.

“I was anxious for them to get off the Hill,” she said, so
the hustled home.

Johnson said her staff carpooled home. She lives nearby.

Johnson said she is anxious to get back to work “as soon as
the Capitol is safe.”

“We cannot allow terrorists to undermine either our spirit
or our enormous capacity to work to defend ourselves and govern ourselves,” she
said.

Johnson said it is “important that we pick ourselves up” and
move quickly to lend a hand to those who are injured and the families of those
killed. The country also has to reexamine its policies.

She said there are “a lot of things we have to learn” from
this “multiple coordinated attack” for “our own self-defense.”

Johnson said the country has done a lot in recent years to
get ready to face terrorism at home, but there is more to do.

“We frankly never conceived of this kind of diversion of
domestic aircraft,” the congresswoman said.

“We as a nation and our people have to move forward,” she
said, demonstrating to the world that America offers a model for resolving
differences peacefully. That’s a key reason that “we are a free, strong
people,” she said.

“We mustn’t let this break our stride,” Johnson said.

It's funny, but understandable, that what I remember are the images on television with my parents, talking to my wife who was out in Iowa, speaking with my kids, talking on the phone with U.S. Rep. Nancy Johnson and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Barbara Franklin and trying to coral student journalists across the globe to weigh in on the issue. How I got anything done for the Press I have no idea.

What should Steve do if the Press closes?

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Poll results

With two polls completed now, we know that I should try to get a job as an ambassador and that most Bristol residents will get their news from the bar gossip at the American Legion hall if the Press closes.